We’ve had a cat door into our garage, going back to the time when Jan and I both worked. Our cat (Itty) was happier outside and she could come and go as she pleased. We never had a problem except once when another cat followed her into the garage.

After I retired, we stopped leaving her out all day and just let her out when she wanted. I never removed the old cat door, figuring she might go into the garage occasionally and catch any mice that got inside.

A few weeks ago I noticed that the cat door was broken. It’s quite old and I just thought the sun and weather had finally taken their toll on the plastic. We’d been having windy weather and I thought the door flopping in the wind was the reason for it breaking. I covered over the broken door with a piece of plastic, saying I’d replace it later.

The next day the plastic was ripped up and the door damaged more. Clearly some critter had been using it to get in and out of the garage. I removed the old door entirely and covered the opening with a couple of scraps of 1″x10″ lumber as a temporary fix. Then, just in case the critter was still in the garage I set out our Have-A-Heart trap baited with cat food.

The next morning inside the garage looked like a war zone. The trap had been tipped on its side and all the bait was gone. The Styrofoam insulation around the blocked opening had been ripped to shreds but the wood was still in place. What ever the critter was, it was large, strong, smart and still inside. I reset the trap, this time placing concrete blocks on top of it and along the side to prevent it from being moved easily.

The next morning I found we had caught a large, angry and very frustrated raccoon. Not wanting to kill it, we decided to go to a public access area by the river about 8 miles away to release it.

That was an adventure in itself. The one problem is our trap is somewhat hard to open. You are momentarily exposed to whatever is in the trap while you are releasing the catch. Fortunately the raccoon was terrified and stayed at the far end, away from where I was unlatching the trap. Once open, the critter took a couple seconds to realize it was free, then ran off.

I hope 8 miles is far enough that it won’t be back.

To make matters even more difficult, momma raccoon had (unbeknownst to us) left behind four youngsters which I discovered just a while ago. I managed to get them out of the garage but I have no idea how they will manage without the mother.
Left behind in the garage is a huge mess. They had shredded up a number of old cardboard boxes, sheets of Styrofoam and old rags. All tucked behind the place where I store lumber, plywood and paneling. It will take several days to clean up the mess and get rid of the smell.

Just some of the fun of living in the country….

Yesterday was my birthday. I am now 1000000 years old (in binary), that’s an even 100 years in octal, 64 years in plain old decimal and only 40 years in hexadecimal. Regardless of the number system used, it was a fine birthday and I now have many new toys to play with. So here, in the order I opened them, is a tally of the loot.

A neat little ornament for out by our pond. This little dragon will really look cool out there. It was from good friends Janet and Bruce. Thanks guys!

Next was something rather geeky but something I really wanted. Luckily, Jan doesn’t mind buying me geeky gifts. It’s a small equatorial mount and tripod that will allow me to take better astronomical photographs. It has a clock drive to allow longer exposures. In the picture I have my Nikon D80 on the mount.

The next package opened was from son Steev. He got me this really cool T-shirt, one that I had seen on-line and been coveting for a while.

Son Allan and daughter-in-law Jeannette, who live in Germany, sent me this really great Easter basket filled with European dark chocolate – YUM! I’m trying to make it last rather than gobble it down in one day as is my inclination!

The final gift was another from Jan. She really went overboard on me this year. It was a new lens for my camera. Not just any lens either. It’s the Nikkor VR 70-300mm zoom lens. This will be great for wildlife photography and also for candid shots. I’ve already taken some pretty neat (IMHO) pictures with it so expect a post about them soon.

I hope this doesn’t sound too much like bragging. It was such a great birthday that I can’t help talking about it. Everyone should be so lucky.

I don’t want this blog to deteriorate into just bitching about the weather but things are getting ridiculous! Here it is, the day before my birthday, and what are we getting? Snow, sleet, ice and wind! This hasn’t happened since 1973! Look at this. Notice the nice green grass under the trees. Hope the plants still are able to bloom.

The power has been flickering occasionally but so far it has stayed up. Below is a picture of the ice on a guy wire of my ham radio antenna tower. Overall the ice is about 3/4 inch in diameter. So far, no problem but I wouldn’t want to be walking under it when the ice starts dropping off!

I promise I’ll post something positive once good weather finally arrives.

Jinxing Spring

• First, we had the lawn tractor converted from its winter configuration to the summer mode. This is complicated and strenuous enough that I’ve given up trying to do it myself and hire it out.
• Pruning flowers, cleaning flower beds and picking up the winter debris in the yard. This seems to be a never-ending job but worse in this spring.
• Then, tricked by temporary warm weather, we got all the deck furniture out and scrubbed up. All ready for warm spring days and starry nights.
• Finally we got the pond opened up. This is another big job involving draining, cleaning out leaves and dirt, reinstalling the pump and refilling. Again, I would rather pay someone to do this rather than ruin my back while doing a half-assed job myself.

Of course, all of these preparations caused the weather deities to chuckle and chant “Not so fast, Mortal!“, accompanied with lightning bolts, thunder, rain and wind.

So spring has fizzled out. We had some nice days a few weeks ago. Now, because of our hubris – WHAMMO! Hazardous weather, dropping temperatures and a forecast of snow this week. Sorry,- mea culpa. Still, all of you in the midwest should be grateful that we have not yet gotten our Miata out of winter storage. Had we done that, there would be snow and ice covered roads in all the states surrounding Iowa. I’ll post a warning before we take that perilous step.

Updating a friends web site

Once it got too nasty to do stuff outside I decided I would work on some long overdue updating to a friends web site. This should not have been that much of a job, only needing new text for half a dozen pages. But as all easy jobs go, little things crept in. There were links to update, out-of-date references to remove (without breaking the navigation) and fixing the “Oops” discoveries. I had to resist the urge to completely rewrite the CSS for the site, though that will have to be done sometime soon.

And just in case my friend drops by, I have to say I really don’t mind doing this. It keeps me involved in coding and lets me try out new things when I feel like it. Still it does take time.

Preventing office avalanches

Then there is the never ending battle with keeping my office from being listed as a hazardous area. I tend to pile things up and if not careful small children and pets could be lost in the clutter. Sometimes I just have to shut down the computer and get out the shovel. Unfortunately I seem to be able to create clutter faster than I can deal with it.